'This so-called lad culture has been very effectively satirised by Jack Whitehall (left, with Joe Thomas) and his co-stars in student TV sitcom Fresh Meat.'

When I'm feeling a little too happy and at peace with the world, a glance at online magazine Uni Lad will always redress the balance. Those little feminist-baiting scamps are well-known for their lax grasp of the term sexual consent, not to mention their constant assertions that all women are "wenches" and "slags". Despite apparent displays of contrition following outrage at their description of rape as "surprise sex", the latent misogyny continues unheeded. The outfit boasts 415,000 Facebook likes and has just launched an online TV channel and a student dating website called Shag@Uni, which claims to have 50,000 members and boasts the tagline "Girls need to be fucked". Snappy.

You may be wondering, as I did, who really needs help getting laid at university? But dismissing these lads as spotty virgins who are terrified of women is an age-old feminist's defence that stops us examining why the site is so popular in the first place. That these are sexually inexperienced young men is something of a given. Any guy with a few notches under his belt knows that a woman is unlikely to be impressed with his ability to draw a giant knob in the sand using a supercar, let alone appreciate being called a "student slut" who he'd "do up the arse" to a chorus of "LAD!" from his mates. There's always an assumption that they'll grow out of it, but the old "boys will be boys" dismissal begs the question: can misogyny sometimes just be a phase?

I remember, in my mid-teens, the way some of my male friends used to talk about women. They'd rate their appearance out of 10, say things like "I'd split her in half" when someone particularly fit came on telly, and yes, they'd joke about rape. At the time, their comments and jibes made me feel terrible. I remember very clearly saying to my mum that the way these boys talked about women was awful and that it upset me, and yet I very rarely said anything to them about it. These were nice, well-brought up middle-class boys whose mothers and fathers would be horrified to hear them talk like this.

I raise the issue of class because, as I perceive it, Uni Lad and its ilk is something of a class phenomenon. We know already that it appeals to young men of a certain age, but the point about social background is yet to be made. Most of the "LADS" (it's always capitalised) I encountered at university were of the Old Etonian or Harrovian variety – extremely privileged teenagers fresh from all-male boarding schools, trading in sexist "banter". "Banter", a word that only really works when said in a plummy accent, is arguably the central tenet of this so-called "lad culture". It has been very effectively satirised by Jack Whitehall and his co-stars in student TV sitcom Fresh Meat, which portrays a variety of student "types" including a group of unbearable posh tossers with scant understanding of the female sex. Similarly, the less posh but still middle class Inbetweeners does a very effective job of portraying the kind of clunge-heavy dialogue that teenage girls have become used to hearing. Those who attended sixth-form college or university in the last five or six years know unequivocally that this "type" exists, but statistics also show that the presence of working-class men in institutions of learning is severely lacking.

Whether or not Uni Lad represents an "entire culture summed up in one hideous website" depends on whether or not you believe what is frequently termed "lad culture" exists or not. I'd say that it does, in so much as it consists of a significant number of individuals using the same tropes and terminology. I'd also hazard to say that this is a culture that has thrived among middle-class teenagers, though that's not to say working-class boys aren't capable of being sexist too. My grandmother's generation will confirm that teenage boys have always had a habit of describing women in the most unsavoury of terms, and in some cases, it does pass. Of the (lower case) "lads" I grew up with, none would feel comfortable using the same language now; some of them have baby daughters. Yet tolerating this jokey brand of sexism sends a message to young girls that their roles are clearly delineated – you're a slag, you're a wench, you're a two out of 10, you're worthless.

As the editor of a website whose main readership is in its teens and twenties, I see first-hand that young women are not escaping this culture unscathed. This language, bred in school corridors and sixth-form common rooms and student halls, wounds and angers them. As one of our writers pointed out, "[Uni Lads'] constant quest for 'gash' has less to do with sex for its own sake, and more to do with reporting back to the LADpack afterwards." The word "pack" is appropriate – these young men are banding together for the hunt, revelling in their bravado and their ability to shock. One picture they tweeted recently shows a leopard clutching a dead gazelle, with the caption "what we think when we see a guy taking a drunk girl home". In a society where women are excelling more and more academically, these privileged young men are asking their readers to conform to a vision of masculinity that is practically stone age, and rather than resorting to "boys will be boys", it's high time we start asking why they seem so keen on dragging women back into the caves of the past, just as their futures have started to seem so promising.